1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to hearing aids and to the fitting of hearing aids. The invention, more specifically, relates to fitting of hearing aids using wireless communication systems. The invention, still more specifically, relates to methods for fitting hearing aids using wireless communication.
2. The Prior Art
When fitting a hearing aid to a hearing aid user a fitting system may be used. It is an industry standard to use a system comprising a portable device, e.g. a so-called NOAHlink, being connected to a computer system through a wireless connection such as Blue tooth (BT). Radio communication between two or more Blue tooth enabled devices has a short range (typically up to 10 meters depending on the type and the environmental conditions). If the user of the hearing aid moves out of the communication range, the connection is cut off. This is in particular a problem when fitting a hearing aid for a child. In some cases this means that the fitting system has to be restarted, which is very time consuming.
Though it is an advantage for the hearing aid user to be able to move more freely, as in this case, when the portable device is wireless, rather than having the portable device connected by a cable thereby tethering the portable device, it is a disadvantage that the time it takes for the fitting system to respond to a broken connection is much higher than the time it would take to respond to a problem in a wired connection. Thus it will not be possible for the fitter immediately to see that the wireless connection is broken. Since the computer system is waiting for a time-out, this may be misinterpreted as the Graphical User Interface GUI having gone frozen and the computer system consequently in need of a restart. A restart is very time consuming and may cause loss of information. In addition sometimes the wireless connection may also have recovered so that there is no need to restart the computer system but since there is no indication that the system has recovered the fitter may be tempted to turn off the computer.
A way to address the problem of monitoring the connection is to use a time out on the signal. The time out may e.g. be set in the range of 60 seconds, which may however still lead to situations where the fitter may think that the GUI has frozen and then may attempt to restart the computer, since the indication in the GUI that the portable device is out of range will only appear once the current time interval has expired.